18 
Transactions of the Society. 
II. — The President's Address: The Progress and Present 
State of our Knowledge of the Acari. 
By A. D. Michael, F.L.S. 
( Bead 17 ih January , 1894.) 
The typical idea of a Presidential Address is probably a review and 
summary of the work done by the Society to which it is addressed 
during the year at the close of which the Address is delivered ; and, 
if that Society be one having scientific objects, of the progress of 
science in the particular branch which the Society endeavours to 
promote during the same period ; but if it be, or ever were, the rule 
to adhere strictly to that type, it is certainly now-a-days more 
honoured in the breach than in the observance. When a science or 
an instrument is young discoveries and improvements come thick and 
fast, if there be even a small number of earnest and able workers ; but 
when it attains what may be called its maturity they are far from 
being so abundant, and a larger number of equally gifted students 
generally produce far less striking and showy results, even though 
they may be provided with better means of investigation and con- 
struction. Our favourite instrument, the improvement of which must 
be considered the primary object of this Society, has been brought to 
a high state of excellence during the existence of the Society, and 
greatly by means of its action. Late years have seen very important 
steps towards its present efficiency, but, possibly from the very mag- 
nitude of those steps themselves, further advances are necessarily few 
in number and less important ; yet it is by the slow accretion of these 
smaller contributions that something more or less resembling perfec- 
tion, using that word in the sense of the best that it is possible to do, 
is ultimately attained. During the past year the improvements have 
been of this nature, and, however valuable they may prove to those 
who use the Microscope, they would not form very attractive matter 
for a Presidential Address ; particularly as you are all probably quite 
as well acquainted with them as I am. There is one point, however, 
which has forced itself upon my notice of late, and to which it may 
possibly be worth calling your attention ; not altogether on account of 
the steps that have been made in that direction, although these are 
not to be despised, but rather on account of the steps which have not 
been made, and which we may hope to make in the future. Great 
attention has lately been paid to the optical part of the Microscope, 
with eminently successful results ; but when one has a fine optical 
arrangement one wants to utilize it in a convenient manner, and 
Diatomaceae and Bacteria are not the only things which many of us 
wish to see. The improvements in apparatus and technique for micro- 
scopical research have fully kept pace with those in the instrument, 
and in nothing are they greater than in the microtome. The introduc- 
